1. Field of the Disclosure
The present disclosure relates to a light emitting display devices, and more specifically to using selective dimming to reduce power consumption of a light emitting display device.
2. Description of the Related Arts
In many electronic devices, the display is responsible for a significant portion of the power consumed by the device. For devices such as flat panel monitors, reducing the power consumed by the displays is important for complying with federal regulations, such as the Energy Star requirements set by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). For mobile devices that include displays, reducing the power consumed by the displays is also important for maximizing battery life.
Until now, one of the more popular displays technologies has been liquid-crystal display (LCD) technology. LCDs use a backlight in conjunction with a passive front display panel that controls the amount of light that is allowed to pass through the display panel. In LCD display devices, the pixels of the LCD panel only consume a small amount of power. The backlight is responsible for a bulk of the power consumed by a LCD display device and can be dimmed to reduce power consumption.
Recently, newer displays using light emitting technology, such as active light emitting diode (LED) displays and organic light emitting diode (OLED) displays have begun to replace LCDs. Light emitting displays can include many (e.g. millions) of individual light emitting pixels, each of which emits a small amount of light when activated. Light emitting displays offer better color quality and viewing angles than LCDs and are generally more power efficient than LCDs due to the lack of a backlight. However, because light emitting displays include so many light emitting elements, they tend to consume a high amount of power when displaying white images and are thus relatively inefficient for use with computer based content such as web pages and word documents.